Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

The Orb - U.F.OFF - The Best Of The Orb

Island Records: 1998

It’s embarrassing admitting this, but U.F.OFF was the second Orb record I ever picked up. For sure I knew about all their previous albums (Orblivion was inescapable the year prior), even took a couple in as demos at music shops. For whatever reason though, I never bothered buying the Very Important Albums until well after the fact – wow, did Pomme Fritz really sour me on the Orb Experience that much? Yeah, cannot deny it did a little, but that whole ‘living in Canadian hinterlands’ where ‘electronica’ was scarce didn’t do me many favors either. Plus, having The Orb in your CD collection wasn’t exactly the ‘cool’ option around my peers, everyone more hip to The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and Orbital. So the conglomerate that Alex Paterson built forever floated on the fringes of my fancy, an act I knew important enough to respect, but not necessarily dig through. You can bet my last dollar then, that finding a handy Best Of retrospective would give me the Orb crash-course I so desperately needed – got me all Orb-woke, son.

Obviously, a tidy twelve-tracker of The Orb’s first decade of music making is only scratching the surface, mostly settling on radio-friendly versions (or 7” mixes) to tell the tale. This includes the Orbital Dance Mix of A Huge Ever Growing etc. etc., which isn’t a remix from Orbital. Little Fluffy Clouds always was the dancier cut from Ultraworld, whereas Youth’s rub of Perpetual Dawn gives the tune more house pep (and, that bassline!). Further along, DJ Asylum (a reworking of Asylum from Orblivion) hits fast and hard with the breaks and earworms compared to its album counterpart, there’s an Original Mix of Towers Of Dub that lacks the harmonica but adds goofy dialog between a cop and hippie in trial, and a new track of Mickey Mars answers the question of “what would it sound like if The Orb used that Native chant from Enigma’s Return To Innocence?”. The remaining classic singles (plus Pomme Fritz (Meat ‘N’ Veg)) are generally so short as to only offer their basic components before moving on to the next cut. Hell, the lone Orbus Terrarum track, Oxbow Lakes, doesn’t even officially appear, hidden away as a secret song long after Pi (Part 1)’s minute-long runtime fades out.

Still, hearing all these vintage Orb tunes finally gave me enough appreciation for their work to start digging further, which I done did. Strange that such a release would have come out but a third into the group’s existence though. Did The Orb conglomerate figure their time in the sun was done? No, but their deal with Island Records sure was, feeling mistreated and maligned by the Major at that point. I mean, the cover art and title of this Best Of couldn’t be less subtle about their feelings if they tried, which astounds me they got away with it at all. Just a shame their retreat led to some of their most inessential work too.

ACE TRACKS:
Pretty much everything, but stick with the LP versions instead. Oh, okay, a couple off here…